I pride myself on my willingness to provide “above and beyond” levels of service to my private clients. This past weekend, that phrase went from mere mission statement to bold reality. Like any story, it’s best to start at the beginning.

The gig was going to be pretty intense — as it involved the setup of a new Windows Vista PC, the migration of data off of the XP machine it was replacing, and the erase and restore of a third PC which was being given to a relative of the client. A lot of work, but I mapped out in my head some of the tasks that can be done in parallel — such as running the restore CDs on the old PC while I’m setting up the new one.

But no sooner than I walked in the door — the client exclaimed “boy, am I glad to see you”. Not to sound immodest, but I’m somewhat used to hearing this, as people look to me to resolve all their accumulated technology anxieties. But this client had an additional reason they were glad to see me — a dead mouse they wanted some help with, and not the PS/2 or USB variety. This was of the Mus Musculus variety. She had recently discovered the presence of a field mouse that had helped itself to some of her dog’s dry food and had set out some traps. One of the traps, shall we say, had reached its objective. And she was loathe to handle the end result. So I did the honors.

Then I got to work on what I had really come to do — help get her new PC setup. I’d recommended one of the new HP Pavilion Slimline PCs, which allowed her to keep the PC on top of her desk, rather than the typical under-desk space most full-size towers are relegated to. In her case, this was crucial, given that her office is carpeted and she owns a dog (which was not interested at all in the mouse). When I took the old tower out from under the desk, it was evident this was a good plan — judging from the amount of fuzz and pet dander on the air vents and fan exhaust.

My plan was to use the Windows Easy Transfer utility available in Vista. I’ve had fairly good luck with XP’s file and setting transfer tool. This would actually be the first (and most likely the last) time I tried using Windows Easy Transfer. Despite the fact that I had less than 10 GB of files and settings to transfer off of the old machine, the tool crapped out twice, claiming the portable hard drive I was using as the transfer mechanism had run out of space. That didn’t make any sense as it had over 30GB free. So I did what I should have done in the first place, use the old school method of manually copying the files over. Stick with what works.

So when all was said and done, she had her shiny new Vista desktop up and running with all her files, her original desktop was moved to another area for her part-time assistant to use, and the oldest PC in the bunch was wiped and re-imaged. I managed to do all of that, and take care of the mouse, in just over four hours. How’s that for full service!